The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order, by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 317 (for now, I keep buying more) Days to go: 309
Movie #53: Chicken Run
In the dark days of 1999’s final months, all the citizens of the world were united in fear. No one knew whether we’d all be living Beyond Thunderdome once January 1, 2000 rolled around. Would there be banking? Would all our electricity stop? Would water somehow fail to flow through our pipes now that computers needed to be reprogrammed to recognize a four-digit year instead of a two-digit one? My own brilliant mother was terrified her beloved convection microwave from 1988 would up and quit once the clock turned to 00:00 01/01/00 — presumably from shock over not having been invented yet — at which point its only possible use would be as a really large coffee table and storage ottoman (the thing was a tank). Our grandparents may have fought in WWII, but we survived Y2K.
During this terrifying time, the entertainment industry embraced two quirky old world characters that reminded us of a simpler time. Their names were Wallace and Gromit, and their stories were told in claymation. At last! A way to preserve our renowned history of dramatic arts once computers became obsolete and things had to be animated by hand again. At once, the Americas took to learning this new old technology and a Hollywood studio — the aptly named “Dreamworks” — started developing a film produced in the Wallace and Gromit style. Naturally, they would’ve abandoned the project entirely once the year 2000 came without a single cooling fan ceasing to whir, but we all rejoiced so much over the perseverance of our pagers that they went and released their movie anyway. The movie was called Chicken Run, and it came out on June 21, 2000, and we were all still so heady with relief and a yet-to-be-squashed naive affinity for Mel Gibson, that we embraced the ridiculous thing. That’s the only possible explanation I have for owning it.
Chicken Run is a movie about a bunch of hens who want to escape their coop. There are many failed attempts, because the evil farmers who sell the chickens’ eggs have vicious guard dogs — as any sane farmer with chickens who wear accessories would. Then one day a rooster named Rocky (Gibson) shows up and asks to be hidden from the circus he just escaped. The hens agree to help him, if he will teach them to fly. You see, Rocky is a flying rooster, or so they believe. He flew into their coop, after all. What they don’t realize is that Rocky escaped from a circus so terrible it shoots roosters out of cannons powerful enough to send them into neighboring (I mean, I assume) farms. So Rocky is a slick, unconscionable liar (this should’ve tipped us off about Gibson, really) who takes advantage of the hens’ hospitality and sets to run off in the night once his broken wing is fixed. Alas, he develops feelings for the resistance leader chicken and when the two discover their farmers are foregoing egg sales in favor of making chicken pies, something something something they build a bird they can operate via peddling hens. The evil farmers make chase but are vanquished and the chickens escape to a bird sanctuary which they apparently can’t share with other birds because they have the Chik-fil-A cows rename it the “Chikin” Sanctuary. And Rocky is for sure sleeping around, because there are LOTS of baby chicks pecking around and you know that dotty old grandpa rooster ain’t got that kind of wiggle in his wattle anymore.
Also, there are rats who consider stealing an egg so they can raise their own chicken and have all the eggs they want. But they need a chicken to get the egg. But they’ll of course need an egg to get a chicken. Ha ha ha!
Now tell me: Would you own a movie like that if you hadn’t survived a terrible threat to your entire way of life? No, you would not.
Viable Option 